Major depression symptom severity associations with willingness to exert effort and patch foraging strategy.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) can experience reduced motivation and cognitive function, leading to challenges with goal-directed behavior. When selecting goals, people maximize 'expected value' by selecting actions that maximize potential reward while minimizing associated costs, including effort 'costs' and the opportunity cost of time. In MDD, differential weighing of costs and benefits are theorized mechanisms underlying changes in goal-directed cognition and may contribute to symptom heterogeneity.

Methods

We used the Effort Foraging Task to quantify cognitive and physical effort costs, and patch leaving thresholds in low effort conditions (reflecting perceived opportunity cost of time) and investigated their shared versus distinct relations

SUBMITTER: Bustamante LA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11213125 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature